WINGS OF FORGIVENESS

by Peter N. Layton

Chapter 1 – Little Big Brother’s Demise “Listen you drunk son of a bitch. You’re not making any sense, and I will be damned if I’m going to let you get me fired from another job. Go home.” Then I turned and walked away. That was it. That was the last thing I ever said to my little big brother. He staggered out of the trashy bar where I was working as a bouncer, and I never spoke to him on earth again. I worked the rest of that night, a rather uneventful night until I went home early in the morning. That was over two years ago, and I still feel a stab of regret whenever I remember how I spoke to him that night. I had no idea then that he was launching me into the most bizarre adventure of my life, and now as I begin to write it all down, I wonder if it ever really happened at all. I remember that morning that it felt like I had barely fallen asleep when I was awakened by a pounding on my apartment door. I clumsily put on my pants as I moved toward the door. I yanked the door open, and I was surprised to see Lieutenant Parker of the LAPD standing in front of me with another man standing a few feet behind him. I hadn’t seen Parker in a while. His muddy brown hair was grayer than I remembered, and his bulging belly led the way before him. He had the same cheesy moustache that curled over his top lip into his mouth. He was one of the few friends I still had at the police department from the few years that my brother and I worked as police officers. Parker had gone through the academy with us. We had all planned to make police work our lifelong careers. After a little over three years my brother got fired for once again being caught drunk on the job. Shortly after that I childishly quit in protest. “Hey Parker, what are you doing here?” I asked. “Hi Jason, may we come in? I’m afraid I have some bad news about your brother.” “Yeah sure, come on in.” I said opening the door wide. Parker walked in followed by the other police detective I didn’t recognize. He was shorter than Parker with darker skin, black hair, and brown eyes. I assumed he was Hispanic. He had a mole the size of a dime on his right cheek. “What has he done now?” I asked as they followed me into my shoebox of a living room, and I cleared clothes and newspapers off of the couch. “Did he get another DUI?” “No” Parker said avoiding eye contact. “I am sorry to say that Carl is dead.” “Oh my God,” I said feeling the blood drain from my face. “What happened?” “Carl was murdered.” Parker replied. I dropped my six foot four inch, 260 pound body on to my aging couch with a thud. Parker maneuvered his body into my duct taped easy chair and Detective Menendez grabbed a metal chair from my kitchen, placed it in front of me and sat down. “When? Where? Do you know who did it?” I asked in shock. “This is Detective Menendez of the Homicide Division.” Parker said. “As you probably already know I investigate mostly robberies. I am only here because the Captain knows we were friends and thought it would be better if I accompanied Detective Menendez. This is his investigation and he needs to ask you some questions. He can fill you in with what we know.” “First of all, Mr. Warrior,” Detective Menendez said. “I realize that this is difficult for you because I understand that you and your brother were close, but I need to confirm your whereabouts last night before I can give you any details.” “I was working.” I replied. “Where, and what hours?” “I am a bouncer at the Twist.” I said, feeling a twinge of shame bubble to the surface from admitting in front of Parker how badly my life had turned out. “I started at 7:00 PM and left there at about 2:30 in the morning. You don’t seriously think I had anything to do with this? I mean, I would never…” “Of course not Jason,” Parker interjected. “Time of death was around 11:30 PM so if you were working until 2:30 AM…” Detective Menendez glared at Parker. “Sorry,” Parker said to Menendez. “We’ll need to confirm this,” Menendez said. “What I can tell you is that a neighbor noticed that your brother’s apartment door was left open. He went in and found your brother tied to a chair in the kitchen, where he had apparently been beaten to death. Can you think of anyone who would want to harm Carl, or do you know any reason why someone would do this to your brother?” “Nothing comes to mind,” I said pulling on my beard. “Carl was a real friendly guy. Everybody liked him.” “Detective Parker tells me that Carl liked to gamble,” Menendez said. “Do you know if he had any sizable gambling debts? Did he owe any illegal lenders any money?” “As far as I know, he played some low stakes poker with friends. He hadn’t been to the track in years. He was always borrowing money from somebody he knew. I doubt he would ever go to a loan shark. I would think that beating someone to death is a lousy way to get money from them.” “We won’t know for sure until we get the Coroners report,” Menendez replied as he jotted down notes in a small spiral pad. “The blows Carl sustained are not usually lethal, so it appears at this time at least, that whoever was beating on your brother was not trying to kill him.” “That’s comforting.” I said in my typical “avoid my feelings by being sarcastic” manner. “I am sorry. I am sure this is hard for you,” Menendez said. “If Carl did owe money to a Bookie or the like, it might explain the way he was beaten.” “If he did have gambling debts, Carl never told me about them, and I would think he would since I was number one on his list of people he would go to, to borrow money. Didn’t the neighbors hear anything? His apartment walls are pretty thin. I would think that someone must have heard or seen something. “ “There was a loud party going on a few doors down from Carl’s apartment which could have drowned out any noise coming from your brother’s apartment,” Menendez said. “We are still in the process of asking all of Carl’s neighbors if they saw anything. The place was torn apart, so initially we thought it was a robbery, but some obvious valuables were left behind. Our assumption now is that someone was searching for something. Do you have any idea what they were looking for?” “I haven’t a clue,” I replied. “Detective Parker tells me that Carl was working as a private investigator,” Menendez continued, “and that you assisted him from time to time. Would you happen to know what case your brother was working on?” “I know he was working on something. I don’t know what it is,” I said. “I haven’t helped him on a case in at least six months. He worked mostly divorce cases, and occasionally an insurance investigator friend of his would send him simple accident cases to investigate.” “Did he make any enemies on one of those cases?” Menendez asked. “Enemies? I don’t know.” “When was the last time you saw your brother?” “I saw Carl last night, around 8:00 PM. He came to the Twist, drunk and babbling about something. I could see my boss was watching us. I got impatient and told him to leave. I never would have guessed that that would be the last time I would ever see him…” My shoulders felt tight and heavy as I spoke. I looked at the floor, and the room fell silent for a few moments. “Do you remember anything Carl said to you?” Menendez asked. “It may be important.” “It seemed like slurred drunken gibberish to me,” I said. “Something I hear a lot of at work, and that I have heard plenty of times coming from my brother. I’ve learned to shut it out. Let’s see, what did he say?” I massaged my temples trying to remember. “As I recall he said something about a wing, or a ring, and he kept repeating, ‘I got the left one, now she can be free,’ whatever that means.” “Well it may make sense once we start piecing things together.” Menendez said writing it down. “Is there anything else that you remember Carl saying to you?” "No.” I sighed. “Here is my card” Menendez said as he pushed off his knees, stood up and handed the card to me. “If you think of anything else, please give me a call.”Parker grunted his way out of the easy chair and said, “I’ll keep you informed, Jay. Is there anything you need?” “I don’t know.” “Here is my card too,” Parker said. “If there is anything I can do for you, don’t hesitate to ask. Alright?”I nodded as I tossed the cards on the coffee table. They both left and shut the door behind them. I sat on my couch for hours, in shock, feeling numb and nauseous. Memories of growing up with Carl ricocheted off each other inside my mind. My body needed to cry. Back then it wasn’t an option. I had shut off the internal spigot that controlled my tears decades before, and I didn’t know how to turn it back on again. Carl was my older brother, three years, two months, and two days older to be exact. He was more like a father to me. Our father left us when I was seven, never to be heard from again, and our mother was drunk most of the time. Carl was the one that raised me. Carl took after my mother’s side of the family, and I took after my father’s side. Carl was shorter and thinner than I was. He was friendly and outgoing, and I was quiet and introverted. By the time I was in high school I was about a half-a-foot taller than he was and almost a hundred pounds heavier. That was when I started calling him my little big brother. I was on the wrestling team and the football team in high school, and my brother rarely missed a match or a game. In my senior year of high school our mother died of cirrhosis of the liver, and Carl became my only family of any consequence. After high school I went into the Air Force because that is what Carl decided to do. When he became a Military Police officer, I became a Military Police officer. We both got a lot of flak for our last names being Warrior, so I learned to box and then studied karate at a local dojo earning a brown belt in Tae Kwon Do right before my term of duty was up. Carl learned how to drink excessively and gamble in the Air Force. We both continued our interests after we were discharged. Once we made it through the Police Academy I started studying Aikido, and Carl acquired a taste for bourbon. Shortly after Carl left the police force in disgrace, and I left in disgust, I managed to earn a brown belt in Aikido before life pulled me in another direction and I quit. Over the next decade, we both bounced around in a series of meaningless jobs, sometimes working together, sometimes apart. I met a woman with wavy red hair, an athletic figure that would literally make men look twice, and eyes as blue as the afternoon sky. Her name was Rebecca. We fell in love and I was planning on asking her to marry me. She grew tired of Carl’s drunken antics, and I got tired of hearing her complain about them. We broke up abruptly and went our separate ways. Carl and I went through periods of time when we were close and periods when we didn’t speak to each other. His private eye phase was only a couple of years old. It seemed to be something he was better at than most of the jobs he tried, and he enjoyed it regardless of the fact that he was barely making enough money to survive. Now suddenly he was dead, and I sat there wondering if one of his cases got him killed. Eventually, my body slumped over on its side on the couch and I dozed off. I dreamed that Carl was standing over me looking down at me lying on the couch. He looked happy and twenty years younger. “She’s real!” Carl said. “Give her back her wings and set her free. She’s at the…” I woke up disoriented. I wasn’t sure what day it was. For a moment I thought that I had only dreamed that Carl had died until I saw the LAPD business cards left on the table. I rose to my feet, found the phone under the newspapers, called work, and told my boss what happened. He seemed unusually supportive, and he told me to take as much time off as I needed. I had a little money in savings to get by on, and I decided I would take him up on his offer. I tried to eat. My stomach was too upset, so I went back to bed.

The next morning, I was dreaming that my apartment was on fire and there was a deafening fire alarm going off. I woke up and realized that my phone was ringing. “Good Morning, Mr. Warrior, this is Detective Menendez. I apologize for calling this early. I was wondering if you were available to go over to your brother’s apartment with me today to see if you spot anything missing. It might help us to figure out motive.” “Yeah, whatever you need,” I said. “Name the time.” “Meet me there at 10:00 AM. I want to warn you though. The place is in shambles, and the blood in the kitchen has not been cleaned up yet, so try to prepare yourself.” “I’ve seen crime scenes before,” I said coldly. I got dressed, made breakfast, and ate in silence, instead of the usual reading or mind numbing television. After breakfast, I grabbed my black, full-face motorcycle helmet, and made my way downstairs to my timeworn Honda 750 motorcycle. It was a typical sunny spring day with the temperature in the high seventies already. It was hazy. The glare made me squint and gave everything a dream-like quality as I plodded along to my brother’s apartment. Detective Menendez was standing out in front of Carl’s apartment building by the black iron-mesh entrance door. We shared bland pleasantries, and then we marched up to Carl’s apartment. “I realize this will be difficult with your brother’s apartment in this condition,” Menendez said as he unlocked the door. “I would like you to walk around the apartment and see if you notice anything that has been removed from the apartment.” Even though Menendez had tried to warn me, I wasn’t prepared for what I saw. The door chain had been kicked off the door frame. Carl’s ugly brown couch was lying on its back with the fabric on the bottom sliced open. The couch cushions were scattered around the apartment like seed pods, each one sliced open with stuffing spilling out. Every bookcase in the place had been tilted over with books scattered and in piles. All of the drawers of Carl’s junky desk were pulled out on to the floor. Papers and file folders were strewn across the floor. The drawers of Carl’s dresser in his bedroom had experienced a similar fate. The mattresses had been dragged off the bed and sliced open. His closet, which had been a mess before the ransacking, looked like someone had run a rototiller through it. Reluctantly, I made my way into the kitchenette. One of Carl’s kitchen chairs had its back shoved against the kitchen table, and the chair was stranded in a sticky brown pool of Carl’s blood. The walls, curtains, and the refrigerator doors in the kitchen looked like someone had shaken dry a blood soaked paint brush across them. Fingerprint dust covered every handle and flat surface. “Please make sure not to move any of the evidence markers,” Menendez said breaking the silence. “Of course,” I said. I peaked inside some of the cabinets, which had all been opened and messily searched. Then I quickly retreated out of that death hole and back into the living room where I looked through the file folders on the floor. I tried to place them in chronological order. “Carl always dated his case folders. It looks like this month’s folder is gone,” I said, “and unless you guys confiscated his lap top and his phone as evidence, I think they have been taken.” “No, the LAPD didn’t take those items,” Menendez responded. “Knowing that those items are missing could help. Is there anything else you noticed?” “No.” I could feel my emotions shutting down tighter, and yet in the pit of my stomach a rage was fighting to break loose. It wanted to find the murderer that had beaten my brother to death, tie his killer to a chair and beat him into the hereafter. “Well, thank you Jason for doing this,” Menendez said startling me back into the present. “I am sure it wasn’t easy for you. If you hadn’t had a police background yourself, we probably would not have asked this of you so soon.” “I’m glad I could help. If there is anything I can do to help you catch the man or men that murdered my brother, please let me know.” I drove back to my apartment. At least my body did. My mind was preoccupied with gruesome images and vindictive fantasies.

About a week later my brother’s body was finally released. I had it picked up by a local mortuary to be cremated. The coroner’s report said that he had an aneurysm in his brain that burst from one of the blows. He died quickly and probably much sooner than his attackers wanted him to. Parker told me that forensics turned up nothing that led them anywhere, and none of Carl’s neighbors remembered seeing anyone enter Carl’s apartment or heard anything over the loud music blaring from the party down the hall that night. I feared that with the typical case load of the LAPD, this would mean that my brother’s case would sit in an in-box somewhere and collect dust. I decided that if I wanted to know who killed my brother and why, I was going to have to figure it out myself. I had some basic investigative skills from helping my brother on a few cases. Carl would have said that I had enough skills to get myself in trouble. I didn’t have a whole lot of options. I began to mull over in my mind how I could begin my investigation while I set up my brother’s memorial service, and I started the tedious and depressing process of clearing out my brother’s apartment. I hired a cleaning crew recommended by Parker that specialized in cleaning up crime scenes because I wanted no part in the clean up of that bloody kitchen, and then I started in on the rest of Carl’s apartment. While sifting through Carl’s papers, I did find a do-it-yourself will Carl had filled out over a decade before that left everything he owned to me, and a life insurance policy with my name listed as the beneficiary, worth about ten thousand dollars that he had received in lieu of payment from an insurance broker for some investigative work Carl did. I figured that money would cover Carl’s memorial expenses and give me a little more to live off while I tried to figure out who murdered him. Officially his stuff was in probate. Since the landlord wanted Carl’s apartment cleared out before the end of the month, I began boxing his junk right away. I also cleaned out Carl’s twenty year old, mostly brown Toyota, something Carl evidently had not done in quite a while. I stored any papers that looked like they might be important and trashed the rest. I drove the car to my apartment building and parked it in the parking space reserved for my apartment, which I never used, preferring to park my motorcycle under the outside stairs, closer to my apartment. At that time in my life, I had no close friends that I could ask to give me a ride back to Carl’s apartment to pick up my motorcycle, so I walked to the bus stop. On the bus ride back, I stared out the smudgy window, baffled about what Carl could have possibly done to bring about such a brutal end. I had hardly made a dent in the clean-up of Carl’s apartment when the day of the memorial service arrived. About a week earlier, I had found an old address book of Carl’s, so I was able to tell a fair number of people about the memorial. Nonetheless, the turn out was pretty sparse. The truth is, Carl had a lot of acquaintances and people he was friendly with, but not a lot of friends. The service was held at the same cemetery where my mother was buried, and I purchased a plot for Carl’s ashes as close to my mother’s grave as was available. It was hot for late spring. Faint puffs of clouds hung in the indigo sky, and birds chattered in the trees. The memorial service was held at the small chapel on the cemetery grounds. A pastor of a church my brother attended a few times said some words and generic scriptures, and then I walked up to the podium to give the eulogy. “My brother had his share of problems,” I said as I looked out at the handful of people in attendance. “He had one of the kindest hearts I have ever known. He was my little-big brother. After our mother died, he raised me...” As I continued the eulogy I noticed three men standing in the shadows in the back corner of the church. One appeared to be in his early fifties, wearing an expensive looking, dark colored, tailored suit. The other two stood a little behind him. It was hard to see them in any detail in the dim flickering of the candles lining the back wall. The man on the right was about the same size of the man in front, and the other man looked big enough to play linebacker for the NFL. From my years working as a bouncer, my eyes fixed right on him because I had the habit of looking for the trouble in a room. I surmised by their posture, that the two men behind were body guards for the one in front.Whoever they are, I thought as I stumbled over the words of the eulogy, they don’t look like friends of Carl. They aren’t sitting with friends of Carl, so who are they and why are they here? At the conclusion of the service, I tried to head for the back to find out their identities. I got trapped by people offering their condolences. One was a childhood friend of Carl and mine. This man lives in the small town closest to the rustic cabin that my Grandfather owned where Carl, my mother, and I would sometimes visit in the summer. “Lou, is that you?” I asked. He had lost most of his hair. I recognized his eyes and his smile. “Yep it’s me alright,” Lou answered. “Are you still living in Bear Creek?” I asked as I peeked over his shoulder looking for the three men. They had already left. I wanted to run out of there. I didn’t want to be rude to an old friend. “Yes,” he answered. “In fact I am working as the town sheriff these days.” “Really? It’s a long drive from Bear Creek to show your respects for an old friend. I appreciate you coming here. I am sure Carl would too.” “I hadn’t spoken to Carl in a couple of years. I was shocked to hear that he had been murdered,” Lou said. “Showing up here was the least I could do. Besides, my ex and my kids are living down here now. I plan on seeing my kids as well.” “Can you all excuse me for a moment,” I said to Lou and those standing around him that were waiting to talk to me. “I want to speak to someone before they leave. I’ll be right back.” I didn’t wait for an answer. I walked quickly out of the chapel and jogged around to the back parking area in search of the three men. I got a glimpse of the large one maneuvering his oversized body into the back of a black stretch limousine. They drove off before I could get to them. I noticed the limo had a personalized license plate of “BETCHA1” which gave me the impression that the limo was owned and not rented.

After my brother’s ashes had been entombed and the few that came to say their final goodbyes to Carl began to leave, the dismal recognition that I would never see my brother again began to finally sink in. I wasn’t ready to head back to my lonely apartment yet. I took a walk on the cemetery grounds, hoping grief wouldn’t follow me. Lou saw me walking alone and ran to catch up with me. “Mind if I join you?” he asked. “No, please do. So how is Bear Creek these days?” “Pretty much how you left it,” Lou said. “It’s funny, every time I am dealing with some trouble-making kids, I remember all the trouble the three of us used to get into, mostly from following through on a bad idea that Carl came up with, which seemed like a good idea at the time.” We reminisced and laughed about some of our escapades, and it helped to ease the pain. “Oh Lou,” I said shaking my head, “Carl could be such a pain in the ass, especially when he was drunk, and yet I know I am going to miss the hell out of him.” Lou nodded and patted me on the back. We continued talking and walking for a while. I decided to get his perspective on the men I saw. “Tell me Lou, did you happen to notice the three men standing in the corner in the back of the chapel?” “No, I don’t believe I did.” “One of them looked rich and the other two looked like body guards. It seemed to me that they were intentionally standing in the shadows, looking for someone in particular, and they left before I or anyone else could talk to them.” “Are they the reason why you ran outside?” Lou asked. “Yeah. Unfortunately, they were driving away in a limo by the time I caught up to them. I did get the license though. I mean considering how Carl died, it seems kind of suspicious, don’t you think?” “Perhaps. They certainly seem out of place with Carl’s usual crowd. Tell you what. Give me the license number and I will run it for you.” “Thanks, Lou. I really want to know who they are.”We exchanged cell phone numbers and email addresses. I gave him the vehicle and license information, we shook hands, and went our separate ways.

The next day I received a text from Lou that read, “The owner of the limo is James Steele of Beverly Hills.” I did an internet search of him. I found dozens of articles and lots of pictures of him. It was definitely the man I saw in the chapel. He was worth somewhere in the neighborhood of forty million dollars, owned several businesses including a piece of a casino in Las Vegas. He inherited most of his money, which he liked to spend on women, expensive cars, and rare antiquities. He was a gambler and definitely a playboy. In practically every picture I found of him, he had a different woman on his arm, each one more gorgeous than the last. Why on earth would this man show up at my brother’s memorial? I thought as I skimmed through the articles. It made no sense. Even if Mr. Steele needed the services of a private investigator, he could easily afford an established and time-tested firm. Why would he hire my brother?

I spent much of the next week trying to pack up my brother’s things with questions like these rattling around inside my head. Packing up took me much longer than I expected. I kept getting distracted by pictures from my past and objects that triggered old memories. Losing Carl was a bigger loss for me than when my mother died. I was more emotionally dependant on him then I wanted to admit, and at that time, I had no idea how to grieve. The only emotion I was any good at was anger. The sadness kept trying to creep to the surface, and I kept stuffing it back down. On the day I was packing up Carl’s old stereo and computer stuff, I found an unexpected surprise. I was picking up his printer to place it in a box when I heard a clunk from inside. I thought something had broken loose. When I opened the door that hid the ink cartridges, right there in the center was Carl’s cell phone. It was a much newer model “smart phone” than the stupid one I used, with a lot more features. Since it is more like a computer than a phone, I hoped it might have some clues on it that I could follow. It was a strange place to find a phone, and I figured Carl must have hidden it there when whoever killed him was at his door. I hoped this meant that he had an important reason for wanting it hidden. I spent the rest of that day and into the night trying to uncover any answers it might hold. All I ended up with was more questions. There was one phone number that had been repeatedly called. To protect myself, I walked to a pay phone down the street and called the number from there. The phone number was not in service. My feelings came to a proper boil on Thursday of that week. I had a rough morning sorting through pictures from Carl’s and my childhood. I even found some of Carl, Lou and me at my Grandfather’s cabin. I was becoming increasingly enraged at whoever was responsible for ripping Carl out of my life, and the fact that I was packing Carl’s belongings in the very place where he had been murdered only added to my rage. After overpacking a box full of books, I picked it up to move it and the bottom fell out of the box, spilling books all over the floor. I was spewing profanities and punting books across the room, when I decided it was time for a break. I walked down to the corner market to cool off and buy a sandwich at the deli counter. I had an experience there that only made things worse. The aisles in the store were very narrow, and I got boxed in by a woman blocking the aisle with her shopping cart, while having a heated conversation on her cell phone. She had her back to me, oblivious to the fact that she was creating a log jam. “Excuse me,” I said Her response was to put her hand in front of my face like a traffic cop. “Excuse me,” I said louder, “I want to get by.” “You’ll have to wait,” she said then went back to her conversation. “I may choose to wait, but lady I promise you, I don’t have to,” I yelled, stepping forward so that I towered over her. “Please, please call me back,” she said to other person on the phone. She turned pale and was shaking as she quickly moved her cart out of the way. I went to the deli counter and ordered my sandwich. When my adrenaline subsided a bit, I looked for her so that I could apologize. She had already left. I got my sandwich and departed the store. I headed back to the apartment feeling angry and ashamed. When I arrived on to the grounds of the apartment complex, I ran into the apartment manager heading down the cement stairs as I was heading up. He was an abrasive Korean man with yellow smoker’s teeth, and he never liked my brother. “You Carl’s brother?” he asked.I knew he already knew who I was. “Yeah” I said. “Carl broke heater. You fix or no get back security.” Then he quickly walked down the stairs before I could respond. “Yeah, well fuck you too,” I mumbled as I labored up the stairs. By the time I got back inside the apartment, I was fuming. I paced back and forth for a few minutes, cursing and kicking boxes. I finally sat down to eat my sandwich when there was a knock on the door. I assumed it was the apartment manager again. I wasn’t prepared when I jerked the door open, and there standing right in front of me were the two bodyguards of Mr. Steele I had seen in the shadows at my brother’s memorial.